i 4 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



of becoming an instrument of disciplinary education. Time would fail 

 me to go into a defense of this proposition. I will only say that I "be- 

 lieve that it is precisely the change which the progress of modern 

 philology is bringing about ; that it is fitting modern languages, and 

 preeminently our own, to become the instrument of a true mental dis- 

 cipline, so far as language-study can serve as such an instrument. On 

 the one hand it is giving a scientific form to the study of the Teutonic 

 element, and on the other there remains the still needful study of the 

 Latin language — a study which certainly need not lose in force and 

 vitality because it may no longer be pursued as the basis of a super- 

 structure never to be erected, but shall have a definite object and be 

 pursued for a practical end. 



But far above and beyond its uses as language-study comes the 

 advantage of the direct and immediate entrance it gives to those re- 

 gions of thought in which the higher mental discipline really lies. 

 Through the direct road of the real study of the mother-tongue, and 

 that rhetorical and, above all, that real logical study which accompa- 

 nies and forms a part of it, can the study of what we vaguely denomi- 

 nate literature, and that which we are beginning still more vaguely to 

 denominate social science, but which yet, between them, contain the 

 substance of all we most need to know of man as distinct from Nature, 

 be made real portions of general knowledge — be transferred from being 

 a possession in the hands of the few, to be reached only by an abstruse 

 and difficult preparatory training, secrets unlocked by a key out of 

 reach of the hands of the many, to being a part of the general inheri- 

 tance of all men. For, to be so, they must be made primary and not 

 secondary ; in other words, that time and strength must be devoted 

 to a fruitful study of modern thought and modern literature, which 

 have heretofore been wasted in school and college on the futile attempt 

 to master ancient thought and ancient literature. The rudiments of 

 all those studies must be reckoned as the most valuable of all the 

 elements of general elementary training, which, in their higher depart- 

 ments, and after liberal culture, diverging in various directions, form 

 the substance of professional knowledge, both that of those professions 

 now reckoned, and of all those hereafter to be reckoned liberal. For, 

 what should liberal education be but the preparatory general stage for 

 that work of life which all honest callings and professions carry on in 

 diverse directions afterward ? What is a professional education but 

 a liberal education taking a special direction ? 



Can it now be said, with any truth, that our nominally-educated 

 young men go out into the world equipped with that general knowl- 

 edge of the sciences of law and government, and political economy, 

 with that knowledge of ethics and philosophy, with that acquaint- 

 ance with modern history and of the condition of the world they 

 live in, and with that real taste for modern literature, which should 

 form the equipments of every man calling himself educated? We 



